jzmtl wrote:Fine, insert analogy of your own choosing.
I'm saying the "ownership" of an idea has to stop at some point. There is extreme level of double standard in knife industry, many of you will feverishly defend your favorite company's idea, include those long expired according to patent law, yet you will not think twice in taking advantage of other amenities in your life provided by exactly the same thing, like how you aren't paying a dollar per pill for tylenol.
Or just look at the BS patent war going on between the tech companies, like apple trying to shut down everyone else because their product remotely looks like theirs.
Sometimes attribution serves a purpose, sometimes it doesn't. In the specific case of locks, there are several different types of liner lock. Even a Spyderco compression lock hidden beneath scales can be called a liner lock. Specifying a Walker lock, or Michael Walker lock serves as disambiguation, not merely homage. The same logic of disambiguation applies to specifying a RIL or Reeve Integral lock rather than using the broader term framelock. In either case, if the looser term was used, the next question in the minds of at least the more sophisticated buyer would be "what kind?", at which point you'd have to call it what it was anyway. The same may even apply to the Collins Bolt Action lock. For all I know, there may be other, functionally different bolt action locks out there. Granted, there may be less necessity for specifying the origins of the midlock but I see no harm in it, since the Mar/McBurnette version is a bit different from Spyderco's current implementation of its underlying concept.
Why go out and invent a new word or words to unambiguously describe a lock for which there's already a specific name, just because that name includes the name of its inventor?
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